Sara Tinney

As a teacher I will have an important role in the lives of the adolescents in my classroom, my students, for whom I will be a constant presence for roughly 10 months of a year (possibly multiple years). Secondary education, grades 7-12, spans a significant stage in a person life, adolescence. Adolescence is difficult to define, but puberty is one universal biological event that all adolescents share (McMahn & Thompson, 2015, p. 37). Puberty and cognitive development are linked in various ways. The brain triggers and is triggered by puberty through an endocrine feedback loop (McMahn & Thompson, 2015).

 

All adolescents experience puberty, however, each individual experience is unique. On average girls start puberty at 10 and boys at 11-12, but some individuals may experience puberty earlier or later than this average (McMahn & Thompson, 2015, p. 45). As a teacher, I will provide information, lessons and learning experiences for my students regarding a number of topics that are either connected to the subject I am teaching (Biology, or English Language Arts if based on my major and minor), the systems affecting the subject, the systems affecting my students (or adolescents in general), overarching systems/relationships, or any combination. Understanding how puberty directly affects an adolescent through physical changes is important, but understanding how puberty affects adolescents indirectly through the social, cultural and family/parent reactions to their development is also important (McMahn & Thompson, 2015). Direct affects refer to physical changes such as, development of secondary sexual characteristics, growth spurts and other changes to the individuals’ body. Indirect affects refer to how parents and peers perceive adolescents, and how cultural and social contexts perceive and/or create adolescents. Adolescents have to cope with direct physical changes, including changes in how they think about and engage with the world, and indirect changes in how they are perceived by and relate to others.

 

Another experience shared by all adolescents is the process of cognitive development, but once again the timing and rate of development can vary. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development divides development into four stages: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. The first two stages cover childhood and the last two cover adolescence and adulthood, so it is the last two stages that affect the students in a secondary teacher’s classroom. Adolescents are typically just beginning to develop critical thinking, problem solving, deductive reasoning, metacognition and other forms of abstract and hypothetical thought. This means the ways in which they interpret and engage with the world and other people is changing in significant ways. The development of or shift to formal operations requires practice and support, meaning teachers need to create learning experiences and scaffolding that encourages higher/deeper thinking processes.

 

Puberty and the shift from concrete to formal operations, as theorized by Piaget, occur during the same point in adolescent development, around age 11-12 (McMahn & Thompson, 2015, p. 78). As a teacher I must understand how this period of multiple and intense changes might affect my students both within the context of my classroom and within the other and/or broader contexts (the student’s family and friends, the school, community and any other contexts they operate within). Providing engaging and relevant learning experiences within the context of the classroom and providing resources that support adolescents in contexts outside of the classroom, are equally important responsibilities of a teacher. Neither a classroom nor the students exist in a vacuum so the learning experiences and supports should be considered separate from other contexts. I will strive to provide resources and support for my students in all aspects of their lives. I will also ground my lessons and the learning experiences I create in materials and contexts that are relevant to my students, providing links and encouraging the creation and exploration new or different links.